Category Archives: rock

Yo Da Man

“Hey you know something people I’m not black But there’s a whole lots a times I wish I could say I’m not white.” I have lived by these words from the Mothers of Invention’s FREAK OUT LP, which I stole that record from Zayre discount store in 1969. I was working at the same store. […]

AX IN HAND by Peter Nolan Smith

My mother had spent her honeymoon on Bermuda. Every winter my parents had vacationed in the Caribbean and each July my father rented a Harwichport cottage for a week. My mother loved the ocean. On summer weekends they loaded his six children into the Ford Station wagon for a drive to the beach. Massachusetts had […]

WCBS Labor Weekend Top Ten

WCBS listeners voted for their Top Ten Songs The list results came as no surprise as the station’s base is mostly older white men. 1.) BROWN EYED GIRL Van Morrison 2.) HOTEL CALIFORNIA The Eagles 3.) SHEREE The Four Seasons 4.) HEY JUDE The Beatles 5.) SWEET HOME ALABAMA Lynyrd Skynyrd 6.) YOUR SONG Elton […]

Sister Rosetta Tharpe

I’m not a church-goer and if I hear church music I turn off the station, but banning Sister Rosetta Tharpe from my ears would be a sacrilege. This guitar-playing churchlady was credited with the first rock song in 1942. She was ahead of her times and everyone else too. Sister Rosetta weren’t no beauty, but […]

Man In The White Hat – MC5

The MC5 appeared at Wayne State University for an afternoon concert on July 19, 1970. A black and white film captured the quintet’s rebellious musical talents, but Dakota from Weird Womb and I have always wondered about a tall bearded man standing against the speakers. He was wearing a white hat and tee-shirt. “Maybe he […]